Country United States Presented by YouTube (2006-2007) | Awarded for Best YouTube Videos | |
First awarded March 18, 2007; 10 years ago | ||
The YouTube Awards or YouTube Video Awards were awards given out as formalized recognition of the best YouTube videos of the preceding year, such as favorite music or comedy genres, as voted by the YouTube community. The awards were organized in 2007 to "call out some of the most popular videos and let the users choose which ones deserve some additional recognition". The awards are the first time that videos would receive any formal recognition; previously, high-ranking videos were only recognized by dynamic lists of most-viewed videos. The winners received a trophy, which was a stand with a large glass "play" button. In addition, they received an invitation to an event to occur "later this year". YouTube does Awards every year, but does not always do a formalized recognition.
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Organization
The videos to vote upon are chosen by YouTube staff, while the winners are selected by YouTubers. The Awards were first given in 2007—called the 2006 Awards—for the best videos of 2006. The awards were in seven categories: Adorable, Comedy, Commentary, Creative, Inspirational, Musician of the Year and Series. Each category then comprised 10 videos which YouTubers ranked in order of preference. For the 2007 Awards, five new categories were added: Eyewitness, Instructional, Short Film, Sports and Political; a general "Music" category replaced the "Musician of the Year" category of the previous year. In addition, each category held only six videos for which YouTubers could vote.
2007 Awards
Voting for the 2006 Awards took place from March 18, 2007 to March 23, 2007. Duke Righteous and Alex Chudnovsky were both nominated in the "Music Video of the Year" category. The 2007 YouTube Awards came just a week after Viacom sued YouTube's parent company, Google, for more than $1 billion for copyright infringement of television shows owned by Viacom.
The Awards received criticism from New York Times writer Virginia Heffernan when first organized. She suggested that the Awards created too much of a formalized process on YouTube. YouTube, she argued, should not be about awards and individual recognition of merit. Rather, it should be a free place where one can post videos and express oneself free of judgment on quality. Caroline McCarthy of CNET News commented on the 2007 awards in agreement with Heffernan: she argued that YouTube "is a cultural hub rather than strictly a creative outpost." She also commented many of the most popular videos are not high quality, or original content.
Nominations for the 2007 Awards included noted YouTubers Peter Oakley (geriatric1927), lonelygirl15, Renetto and Chad Vader.
2008 Awards
The 2008 Awards began on March 13, 2008 and lasted for 5 days, until March 18. YouTubers could vote once per day, but they couldn't change their vote once they voted.
A notable entry in the 2008 Awards was a video of the University of Florida Taser incident, uploaded by The Gainesville Sun; it was entered in the new Eyewitness category. One nomination in the Politics category was an interview with a candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination for the 2008 American presidential election, Ron Paul. Also included in the Politics section was the I Got a Crush... on Obama video. Nominated in the Inspirational category was a stop motion video by Trevor Dougherty, entitled "Stand Up for World Peace." The Leave Britney Alone! video by vlogger Chris Crocker was nominated in the Commentary category. The song "Chocolate Rain" by Tay Zonday was nominated in the Music section; it won (the favorite, Mia Rose, lost by a very short margin).